I won't be late again. In posting tags and awards, that is. At least, I will try. So here's the One Word Meme I got from Mommy Chris of the Mommy Journey and Rosa of Pink Precious (whose site will confuse you since it's all green and groovy!). Rules? Of course there are rules:

USING ONLY ONE WORD! It’s not as easy as you might think! Copy and change the answers to suit you and pass it on. It’s really hard to use only one-word answers. Be sure to tag the person who sent it to you!

I'm sorry I'm only posting this right now. But better late than never, right? Okay, this'll just be quick because I am also occupied by another task in another tab which has been screaming for my attention for the last week now. Hehe. The first one is from Mommy Tetcha of Pensive Thoughts, and here's what she awarded me with, together with the rules below:

Begin Copy

Here are the simple rules:♥ Take your award and put the logo on your post.♥Link the person who awarded you. Remember each recipient of the award should acknowledge the person who honored them and go to Mom's Special Diary to copy and paste the award.♥Put your own blog title and link.♥Nominate at least five deserving moms.

I'm handing this over to the following mommies who I sincerely (as in deep in my heart) believe are deserving of this award in its every sense: Mommy Fedz, Mommy Pehpot, Mommy Carlota, Mommy Rose and Mommy Mye. Next award is from Tetcha (again. she apparently loves me so much. hehehe), and this one's got a cute brown logo:

The above award goes to the following people, but this should be the Your Blog Makes Us Laugh Out Loud award, because that's exactly what these peoples' entries make me do when I visit them: Aria, Jessica, Clarisse, Sterndal and June.

Damn. I knew I had at least three pending awards but I can't find them. Waaahhh!!! Shoot. I am so flooded with entries I should be writing. I hope I remember what I am missing. Sigh.

Well, here we go. Celebrating yet another year of your life with Svet and I. It's been what?, almost four years since we started celebrating your birthday together? That short a span of time, but it feels like I've known you forever. And no, of course I am not getting tired of being with you. When I was a little girl, I used to dream of a man who makes me feel warm just by touching my hand. When I was a high school girl with childish dreams, I used to say that I will find someone that will love my future daughter as much (or even more) as I would love her. When I was in college and at the peak of my craziness over Maroon 5, I swear I will forever stay beside the person who will sing to me my all time favorite song, Must Get Out.

Guess what. You came and made all those dreams come true. I must have done something good at some point in time when I was growing up, to be given someone like you. So you're not perfect. Who is? I know I'm not. And everyone who doesn't believe in you sure as hell aren't perfect, either. Who needs someone perfect when I can be myself when I'm with you? I can have my hair all messed up, wear shirts a couple, even several days old, have unclean nails, a yucky running nose, but you. You touch my hair like it's the most beautiful thing you've ever laid your hands on. You cuddle up to me like and smell me like I'm wearing something just out of the closet. You look at my fingers and laugh at how dirty they are, but kiss them just the same. You wipe my nose with your hands or shirt when I'm crying my heart out in front of you, and you don't mind. Somebody else can do that. But it wouldn't feel half as comforting as when you are doing it.

I know that we are going through a very tough time right now, and I admire you for sticking with us and not leaving even though you have been asked to many times, by me, and by an unbelievable number of people around us. You live life as if everything is okay, and I live life as if everything is not okay. And I guess that makes us a good combination. You make me feel loved, every fucking day of this cruel life. You always stayed strong, for me, for us, and but for you I would've never survived this long. I cannot even begin to form the words of how thankful I am that you are what you are.

Ack. Finally finished hubby's template for his site which he has been bugging me to do for like a week now. He has some sketches out already and wanted the site to look presentable, so. Anyways, after hours of frustration, here it is, finally. Click on the screenshot to be taken to the site:

As you may have noticed from all the templates I have done so far, I'm a stickler for details (that's why it takes me so damn long to finish a single template). I want everything to look right, from the hover effect of the main navigation down to the smallest icons, so I was flabbergasted when I tested the site in Internet Explorer and found that the footer was out of place! I'm still a code-moron so I have no clue right now as to how to fix that. So please, please, DO NOT view this on IE if you like everything to be perfect. At least, until I find out how to fix that irregularity. Any help from anyone? IE has always been the bane of my existence, seriously. Oh well, everything can be learned, right?

I should go take a quick nap. I was exhausted after this, and I really need to start on another project as I have been postponing doing that for quite some time now. Please drop by Paulie's site if you have extra time. It'll be much appreciated!

You all. Thank you sooo much for that lovely reception. And since some people had also expressed their interest, I am donning my genie suit again, "Bewitched" style, in the hopes that I reach out to more souls this time around. No joy for me still, actually running out of "lifeline" and getting more and more depressed by the minute, so instead of this world being one BIIIIG sucking place, why not create happiness for others, eh? So here is the second batch of free blog siggys, and like the first release, I hope y'all like these, too:

I have a bad news and a good news. What do you wanna hear first? I pick the bad (for dramatic effect. bleh.). Okay, so here goes. I will accept no more requests for customized siggys from now on (all together now. awwww....). Yep, that's right. I want to focus on "bigger" things. And here comes the good news. By bigger I mean a FREE BLOG MAKEOVER! My birthday's not-so near already (July 26), so I thought as a way of showing appreciation for the 25 years that I spent here on earth, I'd give something back and make someone truly happy. At least I hope I could make you happy by doing that.

By makeover I mean the template, the header, the siggy, the 125x125 button, the installation in your blog. The whole works. I'm sorry I could not give it sooner. I am still occupied by stuff that I promised people I would do for them. But yeah, the BLOG MAKEOVER thingy will definitely happen, I promise you that. Right now I'm still thinking of "contest mechanics", if I may call it that.

Okay people. Your resident genie reporting. I magically came up with your requested signatures. I immediately made them because I'm afraid I'd be barraged with requests. LOL. Well, without further ado, here they are:

I know that all of you are either Blogger-hosted or your platform of choice is Blogger (wtf is the difference?, I ask), so it'd just be one tutorial for everyone. I originally wrote the following tutorial as one loooong sentence and I was confused myself when I read the draft and I thought, "You dumb woman. Why don't you put it in bullet form", which is what exactly what I will be doing, just about now:

You right click on your image above. I trust that you know your names from there, yeah? Hehe.

Replace the particular section of the following code with the direct link of your image:

<img border="0" src="YOUR URL HERE" />

Go to your blogger account and navigate to Settings -> Formatting.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and where it says Post Template, paste the code I provided above with the direct link of your image that you just inserted.

The last two steps makes sure that every time you start a new post, your siggy code will always be there. From now on, when you go to create a new post, you will notice on your create a post box that the siggy code is there. Just start to type above it like you normally do and voila! Your signature will be appended at the end of your each and every posts. Have fun with your new signatures!

As you can see, I'm not the world's greatest writer of tutorial, so if you run into any trouble because of my step-by-step, you know where to find me. :)

I am having a bad time right now (see my previous post, if you care enough to know) and I need to feel better. This is selfish of me, I know, because I will be USING you to brighten up my mood. But this is the only way I can think of right now to feel good about myself. To give what little art in me that I can share. 'Nuff said.

These signatures you can append to your posts to give it a more personal feel. I made it yesterday, hoping to give it away at a later time but something crappy occurred and I can't hold these out if I was to stay sane. Here are the freebies. You can have them if you want. Just ask and I'll put your name on the design. I hope you like them.

All of them will look good in any background, as they are .png files. Interested? Leave me a comment below. Please help me feel better. Hehehe. Thanks!

Because right now I am seriously on the verge of doing so. Someone spoke harshly to me on messenger a moment ago, called me shameless and a lot of other hurtful things. I might have just accepted it whole heartedly had it been true, but right now I just feel like bursting from anger and humiliation and pity on myself. Apparently, some people on earth just don't have manners.

Recently, and I haven't been telling you this for reasons I cannot say, I quit my job. Yep. The one I was telling you about, the 40-hour a week job. Okay, I might as well say it now. The pay was too low and promises of an increase was not as high and came waaayy later than expected. I felt like the work I rendered was way more than the pay I receive, and I don't like being treated unfairly, which is why I quit. With how the economy is shaping I cannot hold out anymore with what I was receiving from them.

So I went back to mTurk. I didn't want to, because the job is not stable. I didn't know when the HITs I am working for will cease appearing at the site. But the pay is great. In fact, just last week I was able to get a little less than $150 from it. So while I am still looking for another job, I Turk. The catch here is, you only get your earnings through two options: Amazon gift certificate or a U.S. bank account. I didn't want to work for Amazon and then spend all my money AT Amazon as well. That would be stupidity, right? And not very practical.

So I needed someone with a U.S. bank account to transfer my earnings to so that in turn, the person will send my money to me through Western Union. My mom knows this guy friend from California, and things were working great, he was very, very kind. Imagine, he gave me his bank details and his driver's license and other stuff that I need to be able to send money to his bank. He shouldered the taxes that has been incurred by the money I send him. And he told me he was okay, and was glad to help. After all, he and my mom have known each other for like forever.

UNTIL HIS WIFE came home. That was when the problems started. Her paranoia glazed in jealousy led her to say things to me which are hard to swallow for someone like me who isn't used to such harsh words, but I stayed. The reason because I really do not know anyone else like my mom's friend who would be so kind to me as him, and we really needed the money because the bills have piled up, mainly brought about by the very limited money flow from my last job.

He doesn't go online often, my mom's friend, and his wife uses his messenger account all the time, so I sometimes make the mistake of saying hi, hoping it was him on the line and not the wife. It turns out that I am not the luckiest woman on earth, because each and every time I am met by hostile words. I don't know how long I can take that. I don't know when he will go online. I don't know much about anything right now, save for the fact that the Internet bill is already due and the house bills are coming in a week and I see no money coming in. Fark. Why is the world unfair? You try your best to help other people and be nice, you try your best not to bitch about things, you try your best to make a living, in hopes that when you are good, the world will also be good to you. But I guess the world just doesn't work that way. Double fark.

Is this pretty or what? *grins* I spent like five-six hours doing this, and I am very tired. But I LOVED the results. My blog is less cluttered, too (at least IMO). I disposed of many sidebar widgets that I and the readers obviously don't benefit from. There is still so much tweaking that I want done, but I am so sleepy right now that I will be doing the rest of the overhaul next time I get in front of this computer. I am rambling now, I know. I really gotta go get some sleep. Please leave comments below, lemme know what you think. Damnit. I better check the comment section later as well. I hope it's not screwed up. And my signature looks gross on a yellow background. Augh. So much to do.

EDIT:I already did my signature (see below for all new and improved (?) siggy), plus a couple of extra design tweaks (if you're observant you'll probably notice that it's the post separator and the bottom border of the post title.). I still have to work on the post title itself. The padding and margin is messed up in there. But that will be work for another day. Thank you to all those who commented. Makes me feel like I've done something right (finally). But really, THANKS A BUNCH, y'all!

Now that I'm already a mom, I am concerned about health-related issues more than ever. I know it's bordering on paranoid but, better safe than sorry, right? After all, I have a couple of more people in my responsibility now: hubby and Svet. Just the thought of them getting sick is scary for me. So as much as possible I am on the look out for health issues which may potentially affect us, so that I may know in advance what needs to be done to prevent such sickness from happening in the family.

So when I first heard of the substance called asbestos which causes a person to have mesothelioma, a deadly form of cancer (gasp!) by constant exposure, my fingers flew to the keyboard to research on who is at risk, what products contain asbestos, and what are the symptoms of the rare disease (I read that it is rare, so that's doubly scary). The first few facts that I pulled out had me breathing a little easier. Miners and industrial workers are those that are likely to be affected, and no one I know is working in those fields so. But I dug deeper and I found out that innocuous everyday products like baby powder, hair dryers and textile cloths contain asbestos. OMG. The paranoid senses are revving up. Reading further, it somehow eased my mind that the government has long taken a strict stand on asbestos content of products. I hate to leave my family health at the mercy of corrupt government officials, but that's how it is. I just have to be more vigilant in making sure that the products we use do not contain enough asbestos to be life-threatening.

But what if you were already affected? What chance do you have against those multinational companies who neglect to fulfil their social responsibilities that allow innocent people to be affected against their will (or even without their knowledge)? Well, here's what. A good Mesothelioma Lawyer can help you out, and not only with the purely legal stuff. Experienced mesothelioma lawyers can assist you in pinpointing the cause of your sickness, where the asbestos came from, so whoever irresponsible party at fault will pay. Don't just remain silent and endure your pain. Fight. And don't let these companies who are only in for the money get away with it and affect so many more individuals.

I was laughing at Svet's antics yesterday when it suddenly hit me. The reason why I keep making excuses to leave this blog. I should've known it all along. It wasn't that I didn't have the time. I could make time if I want to. It wasn't that I have nothing useful to post. I could choose to write something of use to someone. The real reason? I AM GETTING TIRED OF THIS BLOG'S LAYOUT.

When I went to peek in this morning, I was dismayed at how messy the sidebars looked. It appeared okay to me before, but somehow, being more exposed to WAHMaholic this past weeks (which has a way cleaner interface) made me realize how cluttered the side blocks are. So before today ends, I am cleaning up my sidebar. I will rearrange everything so it doesn't distract the readers from the content (as per criticisms to this blog by several LinkReferral members). What's better (and this is purely to serve my purposes), I will overhaul the design of this uber pink blog. Yep. You read that right. Although make no mistake, the new layout will be pink in majority still, but as a couple of LinkReferral members suggested, I will tone the pink down a bit.

So yeah. That got me excited already. I should've done this a while ago. I should have realized sooner that all I needed to do was breathe a new life (in the form of a makeover) to this blog and everything will be fine. That was stupid of me to even think of leaving this baby. So I am going to get off here, and start with my header. As in right now. Will show you my work in progress later.

My cousin Karla who has recently graduated and is already an RN contacted me yesterday. We haven't communicated much since we moved here in Baguio, so I was very pleased to hear from her. Discussion turned to what's been happening lately to us, and with her, she's working already (not very happy about it, based on what she told me about her experiences with patients' relatives). I guess her university education did not prepare her for stressed and anxious relatives who snarls at anyone within snarling distance, which happens to be nurses usually. She says she was stressed, herself, and needed a break from work. Says she was looking like a makeover model, only she's the "before" version. I can relate. Huh. Being a mom also makes me like that sometimes. Okay, most times. Anyway, back to topic.

So I decided to point her to Scrubsmag.com. It's a sight for sore eyes, the first time you arrive on the page. But what made me recommend the page to her was that it's not just a clinical site, it offers so much more to nurses. From fashion, to personal health, to finances, and yes, even love advice. It's the complete package. I wonder if there's a mom site like that. Haven't explored yet. Anyway, Scrubs is the site to see now that summer is fast approaching. Who says nurses' scrubs can't be fashionable? I pointed Karla to the site's Scrubs page, and even she who always don chic scrubs was impressed. She used to say that it makes a world of difference to patients when they see nurses in good-looking scrubs, not just the drab traditional ones that nurses wear. This great summer checklist right here is worth a peek. Great ideas for a summer look.

Suffice it to say that Karla got off the phone with less weariness in her voice. She said she has to go check out all the sections of Scrubsmag, which is a good sign that she was already on her way to easing her stress. I'm sure glad I helped her, after all, it was her mom who practically sent me to college. God bless Tita Bing's heart. Without her I wouldn't have been able to finish my studies, so I help out her children in any way that I can. To cap off, nurses out there should definitely check out Scrubsmag. It's still in beta, but it holds so much promise that you can't help but be carried away by the vibe that the site carries.

Ever since we moved here in Baguio, I started to hate the rain. I used to love it, I would even let myself be drenched under the rain (yes, even when I was working already) because it's something I find soothing. But here, I hate it. I hate it because it gets colder than it usually is, so I become uncomfortable. I hate it because it's harder to dry our clean laundry. I hate it because we cannot go to the park to just laze under the sun in the grass. I hate it because I can't kiss hubby under the rain anymore because doing it would mean exposing ourself to the bone-freezing cold. I know. Silly. But have you tried kissing the person you love under the rain? Like in the movies? If seeing it on screen makes your hair stand on its end (and not because of horror), then you would miss out on one of life's feel good moment if you don't try it at least once in your lifetime.

So here I am freezing in the dark with only the light of the monitor on, wanting so much to just lie beside hubby and hug him tight to keep me warm, but I still have an hour to go before I can go to sleep because of work. And what am I doing blogging while working? No, I won't get fired. I fired myself from my work already and I'm back to my mTurking sideline in the mean time while I look for a decent enough full time work with good enough pay. And while I'm in between full-time jobs, I found a little time in my hands to spend on changing my blog signature for WAHMaholic, which looked like this after an hour of thinking of a good concept:

From now on I'll be using my old signature there in here, the signature here is eww. I also found the time to design the site for Paulie's drawings, something that he's been thinking of doing for a while now. I posted a screenshot of it at WAHMaholic, so if you're curious enough you can go there, or if not, I'll be posting the screen capture below. Hehehe. Here it is, tell me what you think. Click for full view: